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This article talks about the combined efforts of a team of academics in reconstructing the voice of an Ancient Egyptian priest. It's really interesting to see how linguists work to help figure out which tonal sounds Ancient Egyptian made, and how that would effect the voice of the Priest. It also brought me a question on the ethics of trying to bring someone "back to life" via their voice.

Many people have their own idea of what they find funny, but these scientists conducted an experiment to find the funniest words in the English language. The scientists found that funny words become universally funny depending on length, letters use, similarity to other words, and relation to emotions.

The correlation of foreign accents with "bad" characters could have concerning implications for the way kids are being taught to engage with diversity in the United States. The most wicked foreign accent of all was British English, according to the study. From Scar to Aladdin's Jafar, the study found that British is the foreign accent most commonly used for villains. German and Slavic accents are also common for villain voices. Henchmen or assistants to villains often spoke in dialects associated with low socioeconomic status, including working-class Eastern European dialects or regional American dialects such as "Italian-American gangster" (like when Claude in Captain Planet says 'tuh-raining' instead of 'training.') None of the villains in the sample studied seemed to speak Standard American English; when they did speak with an American accent, it was always in regional dialects associated with low socioeconomic status.

Languages often adapt naturally to the world around them. Speakers create new words to communicate new concepts. But when a language isn't spoken widely enough to adapt on its own - as with Hawaiian - it may need help to move things along. The Hawaiian language has nearly 30,000 words. But up until the late 1980s, the language didn't have words for subjects like soccer, computer or recycling. So a group of linguists and language advocates formed a lexicon committee in 1987 to invent new words. The committee has created at least 7,500 new words since its inception. Many of the committee's entries have been published in a modern Hawaiian language dictionary called Māmāka Kaiao. Much of the group's work helped to make Hawaiian teachable in language immersion schools. But some are skeptical of the committee's work. One interviewee noted that there is a small group creating words that we "need" now, but it's unclear why that word was chosen or how. Even the pronunciation of new words can be confusing, she adds. Disagreements among Hawaiian speakers may seem like bad news for spreading the language. But Larry Kimura, UH-Hilo Hawaiian language professor, says it's a sign that the language is growing. He said the lexicon committee helps speed up what would have been an otherwise natural process of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi adapting to the world around it.

Explanation and analysis of Introspective Self-Talk study by Senay, Albarracin, Noguchi

LONDON - Tens of thousands of London private hire drivers could lose their licenses due to new English reading and writing requirements, taxi app Uber [UBER.UL] said on Tuesday at the start of a court battle to halt the plans.

How to Become a Motivational Speaker (Even If You Don't Know Where to Start) Recently I was flying from California to Oklahoma. I had an excess of frequent flyer miles and I was yearning for a warm toilette, so I upgraded to first class.

In this article, it explains how something as simple as a missing hyphen marks the potential danger of texting. It's changing our language. From our punctuation, grammar, or vocabulary, texting has changed the way we perceive language, words, and text.

Curse words, obscenities, and other taboo utterances-much like the individuals who resort to them in fits of rage-tend to not be known for their stability. They change, fluctuate, shape-shift. Sometimes they disappear on us altogether, never to be heard from again. Or almost never.

Gboard, is the keyboard that is used for Android devices. On keyboards, like this one, you may choose which language to type in according to the language you speak. However, not every language can be accounted for since there are so many. In order to help with this problem, an organization partnered with Google to preserve the endangered language of Torwali, which is spoken in Pakistan. This allows the 80,000 people that speak Torwali to connect with each other And keep the language.

This article discusses the important issue of capitalization of the I in "Internet" and how it has evolved. According to the New York Times, "In some ways, uppercase "Internet" was always a bit of an anomaly, since it is not really a proper noun comparable to a company name or an official place name."

Adapting to a new set of cultural expectations and social norms - while staying true to your own sense of self - is never easy. Below are a few tips to make the transition a smooth one.

Children who are bilingual, or English is not their first language, should not be looked down upon, rather they should be seen as teachers. We can benefit from bilingual children and children are an enormous asset on everyone else.

A teacher discusses her opinion of texting on grammar. She talks about how she occasionally finds abbreviations, such as "b4" for "before", in formal papers her students submit. Although she likes what they are able to do with their cell phones, she feels that there should be adult supervision and a limit on usage.

Call me a traditionalist, but it doesn't look like a revolution to me. Instead, it looks like a simple decline in proper language skills, born out of a digitally literate culture that has grown too comfortable in an age of abbreviations and spellchecks.

Positive thinking can be used to manage and reduce stress.

Your mind is like a big city that has millions of roads. Once you set your start point at one of the roads your mind will take you down the road automatically. If you got exposed to certain positive words for few seconds you are very likely to think positively for the next few minutes. It's interesting when I read that if you use words such as strong, strength, power, while talking to other people, you will empower people to become stronger even if you were talking about the best way to cook food.

Intentional positive self-talk can be used to boost emotional condition and reduce anxiety

Icelandic is a unique dialect of Old Norse, as it was settled by Norsemen over 1,000 years ago. However, this language is now being threatened to be added to the "Latin bin" due to the spread of English. High school students don't even start reading Icelandic novel until late in their senior year.

This article talks about how famous rappers have huge vocabularies to create their music. Eminem has the top number of vocabulary words at a shocking 8,818 words. Having a big vocabulary like that provides him with the use of unique words in his songs and this is one of the reason why he came out with more songs than other rappers.